Costumes, Hamlet, and Iago

Yesterday I interviewed the head of the costuming department at BYU, mainly just to ask some questions out of curiosity about costuming, and how a 'good' guy's outfit would be designed, and how a 'bad' guy's outfit would be designed. She said that usually it's different for every culture, but in western culture, we normally ascribe certain colors with certain meanings. Like green, which would connote jealousy; red, which means anger or devilishness; and black, which means evil.

For Iago, she said it depends on the designer, but you could costume him in something that would make the audience immediately find him untrustworthy, like putting him in a cloak, or dressing him above his rank.

For Hamlet, usually the designer will start out with layers that denote his rank, and the audience will slowly watch him coming undone, losing a jacket, untying his shirt, and so forth.

But most importantly, she gave me info on how to get a hold of costume designers who have designed Hamlet and Iago in various productions!

So here's the idea: I think I want to investigate into the devices of deceit used by both Hamlet and Iago, with the main focus being a comparison of the characters. After all, looks how much they have in common!

• driven by rage
• kill everyone around them
• have 'secret identities' - Hamlet makes everyone think he's crazy, and Iago makes everyone think he's a good guy
• had lovers whom they hurt and betrayed
• they both make someone murder someone else (accidentally or on purpose) - Claudius kills Gertrude, Othello kills Desdemona
• As time goes on, the audience loses sight of what their motivations are - Iago probably just does it for fun, Hamlet probably actually starts to go crazy, killing his friends unnecessarily

Hamlet: driven by revenge, but because his dad was killed
Iago: driven by revenge, but because he didn't get the promotion he wanted... maybe it's the motivations that make the difference....

Can you think of any more similarities??